POLITICS-PALESTINE: Arafat Gives Mixed Signals on Statehood

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 24 1999 (IPS) - Palestine Authority President Yasser Arafat danced a diplomatic two-step Tuesday over the question of Palestinian statehood when he met UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and US President Bill Clinton.

Arafat kept up a precarious balancing act by refusing to announce independence for Palestine two months from now, but hinted strongly that he was gaining international support for just such an occurrence.

“The Palestinian people have the right to a homeland and to self-determination, just like all the other peoples of the world,” Arafat said after his meeting with Annan before leaving for Washington to meet Clinton.

That right was enshrined in the UN Security Council Resolutions 181 and 194, that called for the establishment of both a state of Palestine and a Jewish state (Israel) in what was the British mandate over Palestine, Arafat declared.

Annan was “supporting all the UN resolutions, including 181 and 194,” he added.

The Palestinian leader described his visit to New York and Washington as part of a “tour for consultations with all our brothers and friends for the most important date, which we call the sacred date, May 4 – according to the Oslo Agreement”.

Yet Arafat, as in the past, declined to say outright that he will declare Palestine’s independence on May 4 – the fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the Oslo accords.

That agreement, signed in 1993 by Arafat and the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, had paved the way for Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

Instead of calling for independence on that date, Arafat said that “the Palestinian command will meet after these consultations and, after the outcome, the Palestinian command will then decide what to do.”

Annan offered no comment following his meeting with the Palestinian leader, and Arafat had few words after spending more than one hour with Clinton at the White House. He said only that there was “no Clinton rejection” of Palestinian independence but did not tie it to the May 4 date.

A senior State Department official told reporters, however, Clinton “basically said that we are against unilateral declarations of statehood or unilateral acts that would change the realities on the ground…”

The official stressed that Arafat himself had reaffirmed his “absolute conviction that ther can be no return to violence and that all of the issues need to be resolved …peacefully.”

Clinton, according to the official, said Washington favoured a quick resumption of permanentn-status negotiations after the Israeli elections May 17.

Those talks, he added, should be conducted on “an intensive, accelerated basis” and “shouldn’t be open-ended.” At the same time, the administration believed that setting a deadline for a settlement might also prove unhelpful.

The official also stressed that, in Washington’s view and contrary to that of Netanyahu, Arafat is “very actively fighting terror and in a serious and systematic way.”

He noted that, while the Palestinians have complied with some of its obligations under the second phase of the October, 1998, Wye River Accord, Israel had failed to implement any of the steps called for under that phase.

Indeed, the fact that Clinton met with Arafat at a time when he has repeatedly snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, itself has been taken as a sign of support for future Palestinian statehood. “You may remember that President Clinton said in Gaza (that Palestinians have a right to live) ‘on their free, independent land’,” Arafat added Tuesday.

For all the talk, senior Netanyahu aide David Bar-Illan told reporters in Jerusalem Tuesday, “Israel expects things to continue as they are.”

Bar-Illan dismissed the May 4 deadline, which is the termination date of the five-year span of the Oslo accords, as only “a target date which obviously cannot be met right now.”

Netanyahu repeatedly has threatened Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank if Arafat unilaterally declared Palestine’s independence.

Now that the peace accords have been frozen by Netanyahu’s lame- duck administration and elections are set in Israel for May 17 – two weeks after Arafat’s “sacred date” – political calculations make any declaration of independence complex.

The Palestine Authority currently controls only a few small slivers of the West Bank and about 60 percent of Gaza; including areas jointly held with Israeli forces, Arafat presides over just about 40 percent of West Bank holdings, arrayed in non-contiguous chunks.

In addition, East Jerusalem – which the Palestinians would like to claim as the capital of any future Palestine – remains completely under Israeli rule presently, complicating any immediate Palestinian plan to establish a truncated state.

As a consequence, Arafat might be prepared to relent to the White House’s wishes and defer an immediate declaration of independence on May 4 in exchange for widespread support among governments for Palestinian statehood soon after. Yet even for that plan, the May 4 date presents an obstacle: the impending expiration of the 88-member Palestinian legislature’s authority.

Some of the Palestinian officials in Washington this week, including negotiator Saeb Erekat, wondered who was governing Palestine if, as expected, the May 4 deadline passed without any movement in the peace process.

Erekat predicted a leadership vacuum if such issues were not decided now.

“May 4 is not an arbitrary date,” said Hussein Ibish, media director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a Washington-based lobby. It was the date on which the Israelis and Palestinians had agreed to end the five-year interim period, presumably to allow for Palestinian statehood, he argued.

The logical step forward would be for the United States to push for the implementation of the various Israeli-Palestinian agreements which were frozen in recent years under the rightist Netanyahu government, Ibish contended.

But he doubted that any US government would risk taking on “even unreasonable Israeli positions” – leaving the prospects for US pressure on Israel slight for now.